Gillard apologists try to cloud the issues

Graham McCorry (“Bishop gets well ahead of herself", AFR letters, December 4) has adopted the Julia Gillard technique of avoiding the central issue when defending her actions in relation to the establishment of the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

Under section 170 of the WA criminal code, it is an offence to make misleading statements to an official in certain defined circumstances. That provision has been part of the criminal code since 1913 and was amended in 2005.

However, there was no material change to the elements of that offence relevant to Julia Gillard’s misrepresentation to the WA corporate affairs commissioner about the nature of the AWU Workplace Reform Association.

The Coalition’s case against Ms Gillard has always been based on the terms of the section as they were at the time her conduct occurred in 1992. So much has been clear since the speech in the Senate last week by shadow attorney-general George Brandis, SC.

Ms Gillard’s conduct would have violated the section in its pre or post 2005 iteration. Mr McCorry also seeks to confuse your readers with an arcane interpretation of Ms Gillard’s role in misleading the commissioner.

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She had no authority to pass off this association as an official arm of the AWU. The key issue in this complex scandal is that hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially more than $1 million, was diverted from the union.

None of that money has been recovered and there has been no explanation of how it was spent.

That fraud was only able to take place with the support of Ms Gillard, who knowingly misled the commissioner at that time.

There are many apologists for the Prime Minister, who also rely on technicalities and complexity to build a defence that consistently avoids the critical elements of this massive fraud.